Page 12 of Ricochet

The door flung open and an emaciated-looking woman stumbled down the stairs with a cigarette dangling from her fingertips. Forty fucking degrees outside, and she wore nothing more than a tight, long-sleeved shirt and some jeans. Her fingernails were dirty, hair a stringy brown that looked like it hadn’t seen a brush in months. Her thin, sallow cheeks dimpled as she took a long look at me, with my black ski mask tugged over my face.

“Da fuck you sposa be?” She slipped down one of the steps as I passed. “Hey!” An ice-cold hand gripped my free arm–Christ, like she was dead. “Wan fuck and do on flight?”

I wrenched my arm from her grip. Sad deal, a crack addict. The very thing that could’ve turned her life around was the one thing that would’ve destroyed her.

“I’mma give you the best fuckin’ blow you ever had.” She waved me over. “C’mere. I gotta secret.” She took a drag of her cigarette. “Know what makes’m the bes cock sucka?” Her lips slid into a wide black gap of a smile. “No fron teeth!” Laughter threw her head back, nearly knocking her back on her ass. “No fron teeth!”

I spun back toward the side door.

“Fuck you, then,” she said.

With my head bowed, masked face concealed by the shadows of the alley, I waited. The door swung open to two men, one of which was a white guy reaching beneath his oversized sweatshirt. I shot him first, square in the head, and as his body dropped to the floor, I gripped the throat of the second, pushing him against the wall, before he could pull his gun or make a sound.

My fingers dug into his fleshy throat, just itching to snap his neck. “Where is Marquise?”

His lip twitched into a snarl. “Fuck you.”

Cocking the gun, I held the barrel at his forehead.

“Bedroom. Fuckin’ bedroom. You’ll be dead before you get there, bitch.” His lips curved into a smile, and with the butt of the gun, I smashed his nose, his teeth, and hammered one more blow that made him deadweight against my grip. He slid along the wall to the floor in a slump.

Another man appeared in the doorway, gun pointed at me, and without so much as a thought, I put a bullet between his eyes. The gun fell from his hand as he hit the carpet.

Around the corner, the sound of a TV played an eerie white noise as I stepped over blackened crack pipes, condoms, paper and garbage ground into a dirty tan carpet that covered the living room floor.

A black man sat on the couch watching TV with ear-buds inserted, bobbing his head to whatever music played from the iPod clutched loosely in his palm. Beside him, a white woman lay passed out, while obviously, high as hell, he pecked at the air like he saw something there and seemed oblivious to my entrance.

Gunshots tightened my muscles, and I lowered to a crouch, pistol aimed at the head peeking around the corner. I nailed a shot to his face, and blood sprayed from the back of his head, spattering the wall behind him.

As I headed down a dark hallway, moans overpowered the R&B blasting through the thin walls, and I cracked the door open to where a muscled black man pounded away on a young, light-skinned girl, who couldn’t have been more than seventeen. His fingers tangled in her hair as he upped his pace. The room stunk of sex and piss.

“Whose fuckin’ pussy is this, bitch?” he asked.

“Yours!”

“Whose?”

“Yours, Marquise. This pussy’s yours.”

Exactly the confirmation I was looking for.

Without wasting another second, I crashed through the door, gun cocked.

Marquise fell backward onto the mattress, away from the girl. “Who the fuck?”

The woman’s scream rattled inside my skull, and I thumped the heel of my hand against my temple, as blackness seeped into my mind, threatening to steal my focus.

He reached for what I presumed to be his gun, but a shot to his hand left him crying out. Two shadowed figures appeared at the door, and I fired without saying a word. Both dropped to the floor. Boom. Dead.

I spun back around to Marquise, who nursed his wounded hand, while his girl slid backward from the bed. I boot-slammed his face, throwing him backward onto the bed, and aimed my gun at the young girl, naked and curled up in the corner of the room. “You come here on your own?”

Lip downturned, she trembled with a sob, nodding her head.

“Get dressed and get the fuck out.”

She made a slow rise, like a foal trying out shaky legs for the first time, and gathered her fallen clothes from the floor, eyes on me as she snuck past.

Marquise twisted in my grip, making slow movements like the little fucking birdies still swam around his head, and I held him down while I yanked a black blindfold from my pocket. Driving my fist into his face halted his squirming and allowed me to tie the blindfold around his head.